Posted: September 18th, 2017

Principles Web Development

Write a professionally worded and formatted business memo evaluating the page from a design perspective and describing what changes you would like to make to improve the design and to make it consistent with other pages on the Sunholm Solar site.

SCENARIO:

As you recall, Sunholm Solar is a startup company specializing in the design, installation, and financing of residential solar power systems. A new website is a key component of their planned nationwide market launch, which is now less than 30 days away.

ROLE:

You are an independent Web developer who is currently in the process of developing Sunholm Solar’s new website. You have been making good progress, but have not yet gotten to the page describing the company’s financing services, which the CFO regards as vitally important. Just as you are beginning to think about how to design this key page, you receive an urgent email summoning you to a meeting at the company, in which the CEO and CFO will describe their own ideas for the page. You will review their proposal and prepare an email in response, evaluating her design and describing what changes, if any, you would like to make to improve the design of the page.

PLAYERS:

Hugh Holben (President and CEO)

“Thanks for coming. Sorry to call this meeting on short notice, but we have a lot of balls in the air right now with the market launch less than a month away.

You’ve been doing a fantastic job on the website so far; we really love the pages you’ve shown us. But Janet, our CFO, is getting a little nervous that we haven’t seen the financing page yet, and frankly, I am, too. A lot of our projected revenue comes from financing deals with our customers, so that page really has to sell.

To help you out, Janet and I sketched out a few ideas of our own for the financing page. Take a look and tell us what you think.”

Janet Mclane (CFO)

“You know, this Web design stuff isn’t really so hard once you get into it. I’ve made brochures for bake sales for my grandson’s PTA, and it’s really the same thing, isn’t it?

Hugh and I pulled our ideas together and created a draft that we’ll give you. We wanted to use some bold colors to get attention and some fun graphics to put the customer in a good mood. And it’s amazing how many different fonts there are on the computer to use!

I’m emailing you our draft page right now. Of course, you’re the expert, so we want you to review it and tell us what you want to change to make it fit with the rest of the site.”

DELIVERABLE:

Given the scenario, your role and the information provided by the key players involved, it is time for you to make a decision. If you are finished reviewing this scenario, close this window and return to this Week’s You Decide tab, in eCollege, to complete the activity for this scenario. You can return and review this scenario again at any time.

ATTACHED FILES:

-Review the draft of the fundraising page provided by the Sunholm Solar executives. (PDF